Author: Editors

AGRITOURISM — TRENDS: If your small scale farming operation utilizes agritourism as a way to make money from the farm, here are four travel forecasts from AAA to consider. 1. Train travel is predicted to grow in popularity. With the economy troubles and airline travel safety restrictions becoming a headache, more people are traveling by train. If you have a “How to get here” link on your farm’s website (or even if you don’t), check to see where the nearest train station is to your small farm and let visitors know the distance, providing them with a link to the train station. 2. Nearby and shorter-term travel is predicted to continue. Make money farming by attracting more local and regional customers to your farm’s agritourism destination. If you relied on distant travelers in the past, hold a farm festival for the locals or write a press release on your farm’s B&B as a nearby get-away for regional customers. The title, The New Agritourism: Hosting Community and Tourists on Your Farm shows how to write press releases for your agritourism venture along with numerous ways to attract the local community. 3. “Glamping” is expected to continue in popularity. It’s a combination of camping and glamour. Mary Jane’s Farm in Idaho helped save her farm with this method. The wall tents in her orchard have quilted beds and pretty country furnishings in each tent with a rustic outdoor kitchen (there is a chapter in The New Agritourism on how she started her wall tent project). For the small scale farming operation wanting to just try agritourism out for a month or so without long-term commitment, this might be a fun possibility for the camping and honeymoon months of June, July and August only, then access afterwords how you feel about agritourism in general. 4. And “voluntourism,” the combination of travel with volunteering for a good cause or to learn and enjoy a new experience is expected to continue to gain popularity. The small scale farming community is especially good at this agritourism segment of travel. As two examples we’ve seen, a small vineyard invites volunteers out to learn how to carefully hand harvest wine grapes and discern if and when they’re perfect for picking and gets free labor for the trade; and micro farming families invite the community out to plant a row for the poor – which attracts the media, free publicity for the farm, and new potential farm customers. — www.MicroEcoFarming.com

MICRO FARMING HOW-TO — SEEDS/ANIMAL SOURCES: The urban, backyard and small scale farming of heirloom tomatoes continues to be profitable for many involved in micro eco-farming. Different varieties grow best in different regions, making the crop of heirloom tomatoes in your tomato garden unique. And if desired, the value-added possibilities with crops from a tomato garden are almost endless and very adaptable to food trends.

Below are some great newly released heirloom tomato varieties available in 2010 and two favorite resources for learning the deeper specifics on growing very large amounts of organic heirloom tomatoes in a small market tomato garden. (About 1.3 billion tons of tomatoes are imported to the USA just from Mexico alone. Those grown in our country are trucked for thousands of miles to neighborhoods, cities and rural areas which could easily be nurturing their own market tomato gardens and selling them locally.)

One of our favorite producers of heirloom seeds is Baker Creek Seed Company out of Missouri, with a recent new store in California. They have both an online catalogue and a beautiful print catalogue. Here are some new heirloom tomatoes from them: Monomakh’s Hat from Siberia — described as honey-sweet and so delicious you almost can’t stop eating them. Beduin – described as meaty and rich. And Gypsy, a purple tomato with one of the best colors of all those in this color category. That’s just the tip of the iceberg. Peruse Baker Creek’s and other heirloom seed catalogs and start enticing your customers with late winter farm newsletters or blogs on new tomato varieties you’ll be trying for the upcoming season.

The first favorite book (the second resource is below) on growing literally hundreds of pounds of tomatoes organically from one plant is How to Grow World Record Tomatoes. (This link leads to our Amazon affiliate for it. Don’t forget to shop locally, though!) One of our editors bought this book for her dad who was an avid tomato grower. I think the title can be deceptive. “World Record” to many means individual tomatoes grow very big, maybe winning blue ribbons. By “World Record” in this case, the author of the book means amounts: sometimes more than 300 pounds of tomatoes from one plant, whereas commercial tomato plants grow only about 8 pounds. The author has a slight Christian slant to his writing which even those who aren’t Christian don’t seem to find offensive, though some might a little. His growing region is a relatively hot area, though, so more northern small scale farming tomato garden efforts may get less than his record of about 340 pounds per plant, but even 200 as compared to 8 is a huge advantage.

The other resource we recently affiliated with for those who prefer instantly downloadable books is called Organic Tomato Magic. It has the criteria we’re looking for: organic (or sustainable) growing methods, focused on creating exceptional flavor, and producing much larger-than-commercial quantities in smaller tomato gardens – which are the needs of the urban, backyard and small scale farming community. The author comes from a long generation of farmers and offers methods such as a special grooming of the number of leaves on the tomato plant to produce flavor that your customers can’t resist, such as delicious tomato aroma even before slicing the tomatoes open, something that certainly helps roadside and farmers’ market sales, and keeps CSA customers and u-pickers loyal to your small scale farming venture. (We always want to hear from you if you have a problem with a third party resource we recommend. We can’t change third party resources, but we can certainly stop recommending them if they don’t live up to our standards. Our contact is on the home page of the Micro Eco-Farming Center.) Also see our full length article overviewing heirloom tomatoes in our “Crop Library” on the first home page of the Micro Eco-Farming Center, and we always suggest that micro eco-farmers go even deeper with how they farm the soil than what even some organic book methods suggest. Use their above ground spacing and pruning ideas, but add the goal of creating deep, live, humus-rich soil with the full spectrum of trace minerals from the sea or from very deep rooted cover crops, and see just how much more productive you can be. Our article at the Center on nurturing the soil is a good starter for small scale farming of any crop, including a first market tomato garden: – www.MicroEcoFarming.com

MARKETING — TRENDS — VALUE-ADDED: In Montana, the Gallatin Valley school district as well as a half a dozen schools close to Bozeman are selling local farm products as fundraisers instead of the usual items such as candy. Some of the small scale farming products sold include honey, syrups, huckleberry and other preserves, fresh winter produce, seasonings, roasted cereals, granola, specialty lentils, and barley. The farm-to-school connection continues to grow. What are the fund raising needs for the school or schools in your area? How and when do they sell their products and what quantities do they need? If your small scale farming operation is new, part time or very small, consider approaching a smaller school or group such as a preschool, scout troupe or Montessori private school to gain experience in this farm marketing technique. You may also want to cooperate with others in your local small scale farming community to create gift baskets — www.MicroEcoFarming.com

MICRO FARMING HOW-TO: Both table grapes and wine grapes grown locally and sustainable are poised to become even more popular as the growing number of studies on their health benefits continue to reach the mainstream, and as locally and sustainably produced crops continue to be sought. If you’re currently composting this most recent fall’s leaves, consider adding kelp meal either this winter or this coming spring to the mix, and using the resulting compost for planting your first grape vines, or mulching current ones. See our brand new full length article on sustainable grape growing for the micro eco-farm at the MEF center under the crop profile library.